


Day of Tears and Late Repentance

by unorigelnal (jayburding)



Series: The Sound of Silence [3]
Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Child Death, Depression, Gen, Stillbirth, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-19
Updated: 2012-04-19
Packaged: 2017-11-03 22:57:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/386919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayburding/pseuds/unorigelnal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to All the World to Ashes Turning. For the prompt asking for "a sequel where Loki finally confides in someone and is comforted".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day of Tears and Late Repentance

Searching out Odin felt like a mistake before he’d even entered the room. His father looked up as the door creaked an announcement of his arrival, and the torchlight bloomed across his face and sparked in the dull black eyes of Huginn and Munnin on his shoulders.

Munnin cracked his beak and the fire-crackle of his low voice made Loki flinch.

Odin looked at him with that single, piercing eye and Loki had to turn away. He was so thin now, his father’s gaze cut clean through.

“What is it, Loki?” Odin was neither harsh nor soft, and still it choked him.

“Only a question, father.” Loki willed away the lump in his throat. He had to finish the sentence without stuttering. Odin nodded his permission to continue.

“What is the requirement for admission into Valhöll or Fólkvangr?”

He knew Odin would be suspicious. The look his father gave him spoke of fear before suspicion though: it shouldn’t have surprised him that Odin would suspect him of ill intentions towards his beloved hall.

“You pick a strange time to become philosophical.” Loki expected to be rebuffed but Odin was silent as he contemplated Loki’s query.

“Honourable death in battle is the correct answer,” Odin finally responded, “but not the one you want.” Loki squirmed, highly aware of the cold regard of the ravens and the lamplit eyes of the wolves as Geri and Freki stirred where they lay by the fire. The audience was too much.

“Perhaps you should ask the question you mean to,” his father told him, and the flickering light made him frightful, glinting off the points of his armour and the garish shield of his lost eye, and casting long, pointed shadows against the wall.

  _Are children accepted into the hallowed halls?_

Loki’s silver tongue failed him. He fled.

+

Loki was a fastidious creature by nature, and much as he despised the public elements of bathing, he would not forgo cleanliness for the sake of privacy. Bathing alone was near impossible, despite his efforts.

He kept his trips brief, only long enough to ensure a decent scrub, and tried to engineer it so there were as few people as possible there when he was. Recently, he was even more careful to do this.

He did not know he’d been observed until after the fact.

“It was a cut big enough to gut him.” Fandral’s words stopped him dead in his tracks- of course Fandral, the prissy warrior spent more time in the water than out of it- but too late to duck back behind cover. “And recent: the scar’s still fresh.”

The fear in Thor’s eyes seared as much as Odin’s had. The curiosity of the others, in varying depths of cold, made him sick.

Loki offered them a story about playing his tricks amongst the dwarves again, and saving his lips this time at the cost of his belly. He revelled in how easily they believed it, but struggled to sleep later when their derisive eyes pierced him and wouldn’t go away.

Eventually he gave up sleep and left his room, but found his bare footsteps leading not to the stable as had once been his wont- Sleipnir suffered too much from his mother’s depression for Loki to trouble him again- but the glowing expanse of the Bifrost. He left a trail of blazing footprints behind him as he walked upon it, and tried to pretend that the light alone could eliminate the shadows following him.

He came upon Heimdall quicker than he expected. The AllSeer didn’t spare him a glance, only looked out into the nothingness and saw everything.

Loki sat at Heimdall’s feet and gazed at the same void the gatekeeper did, wondering if he would just disappear if he stepped into the raw power of the Bifrost without a direction. Could it be that easy?

“Your thoughts are very shallow tonight,” Heimdall murmured above him, without so much as blinking.

“Shallow?” Loki looked down at himself and had to concede that what vanity he’d had in his appearance was long gone. “I wouldn’t say so.”

“You wear your thoughts on your face,” came the explanation, ponderous and inevitable as dawn. “It is... unlike you.”

“And you would see them whether or not I wore them openly,” Loki replied without the heat he should have had, “so what does it matter to you?”

“I cannot see you.” There’s a reprimand hidden in Heimdall’s soft tone. “You know that.”

It was a comforting reminder. The AllSeer could not flaunt his agony to the AllFather like tawdry palace gossip.

“Something hurts you.” Heimdall had not looked away from the world as it looked to him, and yet Loki was transfixed by the sharpness of his gaze.

“Hardly news when the world delights in warfare.”

“You avoid an answer.”

“You didn’t ask a question.”

Heimdall fell silent. The quiet encroached on Loki, stifling and cold, buzzing with every thought, every fear, every grief gone smothered.

“What hurts you?” Heimdall’s voice was so gentle that it almost drowned in the silence. It was such a massive concession on the AllSeer’s part that Loki was bereft of any reply.

His heart faltered, and the second beat was excruciating enough to make his eyes burn. The pain was dangerous with Heimdall’s eyes on him. He had to quiet it.

“Everything,” he offered as explanation, intending irony as he looked up to where Heimdall’s eyes didn’t look at him, and found the AllSeer’s eyes on him.

Seeing him.

His sight blurred before he could read the gatekeeper’s expression, and he knew it was lost. Loki hid his face as his shields came apart like rotten tapestry at a touch and sobbed til he couldn’t breathe.

Under his clothes, the scar burnt like it was still fresh and the saltwater had seeped through to sear it. The emptiness reared up-it had only grown- and choked him; loss tasted like ashes.

He didn’t feel better when his tears ran out. Grief sat heavy in his chest like a malignancy so potent that in his maddest moments he thought to cut it out just to be rid of its weight. The salt stiffened on his face and itched until he scrubbed it away. The world was no better for it, but he was certainly worse.

A careful touch, soft as moonlight on snow, stirred him.

Heimdall could not offer platitudes. The AllSeer didn’t lie.

There was nothing in his silence, but it was not empty. No lies, no judgement, no condolence. He just was, as he’d ever been, immutable and constant.

Loki leaned against the gatekeeper and closed his eyes. He felt the gentle touch of the hand on his hair; heard the hum of the Bifrost beneath them and the counterpoint of their breathing; smelled the sharp tang of metal and ozone, cleaner than the copper taste of blood.

The world narrowed to a pinpoint, a tiny space that couldn’t contain fire and ash and cold and the merry-go-round  _can’t happen don’t leave grief pain blood silence help oh god help_  that his thoughts had become.

Heimdall’s hand stirred on his hair, too matter-of-fact to be a caress, too gentle for a rebuff, but repetitive enough to be soothing. Loki allowed it to lull him and drifted off.

It wasn’t an answer. But it was enough.


End file.
